


If You Were To Ask

by TheLittleMuse



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 06:30:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2181486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLittleMuse/pseuds/TheLittleMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins has felt many things about adventures in his lifetime. Eventually, he might just get the adventure he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Were To Ask

If you were to ask young Bilbo Baggins whether he was going to go on an adventure he would jump up, all boyish enthusiasm and regale you with tales of his ancestor, Bullroarer Took. He would tell you all the tales his mother had told him and tell you that one day, _one day_ , he would go an adventure just as great as them. It might not occur to you, just then, that unlike most hobbits he was always on his own as he played. If it did, it didn’t matter; he was happy enough in his own world.

 

If you were to ask fifty year old Bilbo Baggins whether he was going to go on an adventure, he would cough into his pipe and offer you tea in that extremely polite way that only Baggins know, that somehow makes the recipient feel ashamed right to their very soul. And so Bilbo Baggins would move around Bag End, as predictable as he always was and ignore the beating of his Tookish heart.

 

(If you would ask him a few months later he would huff and grumble, but a smile would play around his lips and a glint in his eyes).

 

If you were to ask fifty two year old Bilbo Baggins whether he was going on an adventure he would regale you with tales of trolls and dragons and _dwarves_. And you would never notice the sadness in the edge of his eyes and the slight shake of his hands. He might leave suddenly, almost rudely at the end (or even the middle) of his tale, but that was just Bilbo, he was odd like that.

 

If you were to ask seventy year old Bilbo Baggins whether he was going on an adventure, he would gesture to his sleeping nephew and say that family was the greatest adventure of them all. You wouldn't notice the air of sadness that still pervaded Bag End. The heaviness of a shared grief that whilst wildly different in their roots, still spoke together of loss.

 

If you were to ask eleventy one year old Bilbo Baggins whether he was going on an adventure he would gesture to his packed bags and tell you of his plans for his final journey. You would miss the slightly wild, desperate look in his eyes, and his sadness when he talked of his nephew. It was for the best.

 

If you were to ask Bilbo Baggins, who had now reached an age no hobbit had ever reached before, whether he was going on an adventure, he would answer (if his mind was clear, for it was often muddled these days) that he hoped so. You couldn't help but notice the wistful tone and wonder what he hoped for.

 

If you were to ask Bilbo Baggins, now in a place where age held no meaning, whether he was going on an adventure, he wouldn't answer, but smile at the dwarf king by his side. For Bilbo Baggins cannot enter the Halls of Mahal and Thorin Oakenshield couldn't enter the Undying Lands, but the Valar were romantics in their hearts, and the place they now inhabited both did and did not exist. And so Bilbo would laugh, and ask what, exactly, did you call an adventure if not this?  


End file.
